Forum OpenACS Q&A: NSD won't die...

1: NSD won't die...

Posted by defunct defunct on 10/17/01 01:44 PM

I suspect this has been addressed before but I can't find anything
useful under AOLServer or elsewhere.

Under Mandrake 8 (Oracle version) we're occasionally getting into a
situation where an NSD process won't die . Only solution is a reboot
which is not really ideal :0).

Has anyone encountered this before?

Thanks Simon

2: Response to NSD won't die... (response to 1)

Posted by Jerry Asher on 10/17/01 06:56 PM

Yes and no. If it hasn't zombied (which I haven't seen in a very long time, and several versions ago), then it's never been anything a killall couldn't whack down for me.

3: Response to NSD won't die... (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 10/17/01 07:44 PM

Does nsd still zombie on 2.4 kernels when a handle goes stale? The traditional way to avoid the zombie problem is to set the lifetime of database handles to a very large value so once connected to Oracle they'll never be allowed to die.

For production systems this seems like the best thing to do anyway (I know aol.com runs with db handles configured to live forever and if it works for them it will work for me) so try this if you've not already.

4: Response to NSD won't die... (response to 1)

Posted by S. Y. on 10/18/01 04:10 AM

Does nsd still zombie on 2.4 kernels when a handle goes stale? The traditional way to avoid the zombie problem is to set the lifetime of database handles to a very large value so once connected to Oracle they'll never be allowed to die.

I think this was solved a while ago. I just tried it earlier today (setting MaxIdle and MaxOpen to nothing and left my server running for a couple of hours. I then set MaxIdle and MaxOpen to 100 (100 seconds, I presume) with no problems.

I'm running Red Hat Linux 7.1, kernel 2.4.12, AOLserver 3.3.1+ad13, ArsDigita Oracle8 database driver v2.6, Oracle 8.1.7.0.1. I'm not running the ACS. Naturally, I ran a couple of database-backed Tcl pages (table-test.tcl, et al) before letting the server sit around. I haven't seen the stale db handle snafu nor any mention of it for many, many months.

I believe the problem lies elsewhere (i.e., not related to stale db handles) assuming that Simon is using current software (kernel, nsd, Oracle driver, Oracle).